Dr Scure Stories - Chapter S
(Written by Ace Dreamer; posted 09 September 2012)
Dr Scure - Season One - 29/Aug/2012
Chapter S
SerentityCon
September, 2013, Ganymede.
Brains looked around. The general anouncement of a Boskone attack on SerenityCon had just been made, and reactions varied between disbelief, panic, and purposeful action. He was pretty sure he and his family could get out OK, but, there were people here who'd need help.
He'd found already that the stair-climbing morph of his wheelchair wasn't unique - there were at least two he'd seen in action, and the design of several others was suggestive. Present were quite a few older, and less healthy, Fen who were resisting the idea of a biomod, until it was understood better. Was anyone thinking how they'd get out of here?
"Uran?" "Yes Brains." "If you'd go get Doctor Venus, and the Gibson Girls, I think we've an evacuation to organise."
The Gibson Girls proved very useful. Fortunately they'd been in their battle forms, though mostly unarmed, as they'd been cos-playing drider Japanese schoolgirls around the con. Charlie was scouting, invisible, when needed swimming through walls. There were Boskone in the con buildings, trying to keep people away from the car parks. Dana was hanging back, tele-operating their shared bimbot swarm. Fighting their way in from the car park. In theory she could run half-a-dozen, and still be at full combat effectiveness, but none of this was battle tested.
They'd lost three bimbots so far. She-Hulk had gone down to some sort of anti-tank weapon. Her force field was pretty good, but it boosted her strength as well as protected her, and she'd been de-shelling a Boskone powered armour trooper. Marvelgirl had fared better, till she got hit by a kinetic round after an EMP grenade weakened her. Battlecat, a kitty cyborg based on a PC of Brains, was only lightly armoured, and was like the others reduced to a costume and shreds of wet plastic.
Uran got to argue with a Berserker. It was all rage and strength, and initially her martial arts let her hold it off. Brains and some of the others had rigged a mobile force field bubble, anchored to three of the wheelchairs, which so far had stopped any shrapnel, and ricochets. In the middle of their formation were four stretchers, on rigged anti-gravity floats, tended by Doctor Venus. The fitter of the evacuees were helping the slower along. There were about twenty-five of them, including three older children that'd been separated from their parents.
Then Uran zigged when she should have zagged. The Berserker clipped her, and she flew back more than thirty feet, through a pillar, and into a solid wall. Maybe the Berserker laughed, but you couldn't tell from the sound it made. Uran got up, shook her head, and looked determined. Then walked slowly towards the Berserker as it unloaded a heavy machine gun at her, then a grenade.
As the evacuees rounded another corner, away from the fight, Brains looked back. Charlie swam out of the floor, a bright-red six-legged cat centaur, then set herself as she turned black, to telemech the Berserker. Brains heard familiar music, the original 'Astro Boy' theme, as Uran blurred into sight and flew {italic}through{/italic} the Berserker, and the wall behind it. "I hope she's not too upset about that", Brains thought.
At the cost of one more bimbot, a Spiderwoman, they'd made it to the car park. Not bad for superhero props intended for the Masquerade. Quite a few of the vehicles were damaged, and it was generally pretty chaotic. Brains paused to assess things. One of the people who'd been most useful in organising the evacuees, an older man with a limp, stepped forward. He took off his glasses, fumbled under his chin, then peeled off his face.
"Always wanted to do that", said Uncle Jack, as he straightened up, and peeled off liver-spotted skin gloves.
"Now, you got us some transport to get us all out of here?"
Brain numbly gestured towards War Rocket Ajax, which was skirting the edge of the car park towards them.
Air Port Convention
September, 2013, Ganymede.
Brains was unhappy. Yes, he knew he was doing 'good work'. Yes, Uran approved. But, he was quite miffed at being turned out of his own bed.
He considered the "SS Champ" his second home, after his Lunar one. The dower house, back on Earth, that was Brainless' now. Even before he'd admitted it, he'd been nudged out onto the "SS Champ"; now that was a hospital ship.
When he got upset like this, Brains was inclined to retire from the world, and work. Here he was in Serenity Valley, in the "SS Gee Gee", with all the supplies that had been in the Champs' hold. Hmm. The con buildings were looking pretty wrecked. Wasn't there a Morian freighter nearby that owed him a few favours? {centre}{bold}---{/bold}{/centre} "Work, it helped keep you sane", thought Brains. He was only one of quite a few people working on repairing the con buildings. The Morians had pitched-on, and there were a full set of twelve bimbots, in neat overalls, with hard hats. The Gibson Girls were doing the heavy lifting, and, he thought Uran was around, somewhere.
While the bimbots were a bit rough, early on, particularly when their controlling Gibson Girl was trying to do something complex, they quickly smoothed out. Initially they were synchronised, in an eerie way, then they developed the little hitches and pauses, the looking at each other to check things. Brains knew the Girls were pretty good, but they were improving at an amazing rate.
The main thing was to fix any structural risks, and Brains was using roughly the equivalent of battlesteel for that. So far he was avoiding the more exotic materials he tended to work with – common super materials were good enough. The next task was infrastructure, once there was no more reliance on forcefields just to keep people alive. Power, lighting, air circulation, that sort of thing – hard-wired communications, temperature control, water and sewage was unfortunately secondary.
Brains had learned a lot of tricks with waved mylar over the years – shaping it was almost second nature by now. He was focused on invisible mending of the walls, and floor and ceiling, of course. Where possible he was matching the acoustic properties, though he had to make guesses in a few places – there was so little original structure to copy. Waved aero-gel with tweaked properties fixed most things.
After a couple of days work there was very little visible damage left. Brains had been processing con building carpets, through a scaled-up version of his Auto Tailor. Fortunately he'd access to good music libraries, to keep the machine happy. Others had been working on fixtures and fittings – things were still a bit sparse in places, but it was looking pretty good.
Uran had been recording the remaining con program streams for Brains. She also claimed that she was asking the awkward questions he would have done, but, he wasn't convinced. Doctor Venus had discharged almost all her patients, and the ones she had left were mostly Boskone, who'd featured well down in her triage priorities. The Gibson Girls had gone over towards providing security, which after all was their real job, and only had to foil three escape attempts – they weren't bothering counting the bribery or other coercion.
Everything should be done for the con closing ceremonies, and the final, local, funeral services that were to follow. One way or another, Brains knew they'd be picking up the pieces from this for years.
But, he'd made new friends, renewed old ones, and he couldn't claim it hadn't been a memorable con.
Heres Jack
September, 2013, Ganymede/Luna.
As Brains suspected, his Uncle Jack had left a way to get in contact. It turned out he'd attended the rest of the con, in particular Noah Scott's presentation. Brains wished he had gone to that, but he'd still been repairing bits of hotel. So he'd have to make do with Uran's recording.
The Whole Fenspace Catalog. People would be picking bits of that out of their teeth for years, decades maybe. Brains wanted to know how the other worlds worked. The tech was interesting, but it was how the people lived that he really wanted to know. Did they love and hate the same way? Had they solved, or got different approaches, to any of Life's great problems? On a personal level (yes, it was petty), was he recorded in fiction on any of their worlds?
They'd handed over the last of the Boskone prisoners to the Patrol. Attended the last funerals. Steam cleaned the SS Champ; vacuum would help on the way back to Luna, and they'd do a more thorough clean-up there, just in case any nasty little surprises had been left behind. The Gibson Girls chose to fly back under their own power - they said they needed time to think. Uncle Jack joined Brains, Uran and Doctor Venus in the SS Champ.
It was the first time Uncle Jack had visited the Lunar home. They'd crossed paths a few times in the last five years, but Jack or Brains were always on their way to somewhere else. Brains said he trusted Jack, as a member of the family, and Jack pursed his lips and said that was OK.
Brains was pretty sure Jack was impressed, though he controlled himself pretty well. Brains had a good enough artists eye that he spotted the little pauses, the controlled casual look around. Jack seemed particularly taken by the garden in the central courtyard, shaded his eyes, looked straight into the 'Sun'. "Nice" was his comment.
Then Brains showed Jack his guilty secret. The mauler pit. While only a skeleton the scale of the immense tear-drop shape was clear. Jack was clearly taken aback. "I know you play with big toys, but this is a bit much. They'll crucify you for this. Didn't you follow your mother into CND? Now, tell me that isn't a warship."
Brains explained how it kept niggling at him. How it only left him alone if he came and did a bit more work on it. "Thermite, or cement. Burn as much as you can and fill-in the rest of this pit. Then go and have a nice holiday. Somewhere you'll really enjoy. Read a few books by your favourite authors. Turn your brain off." Brains was quite certain his Uncle Jack was totally serious.
"I'm not sure that'd wreck it thoroughly enough" admitted Brains. "Will it fly?" asked Jack. "Yes", said Brain, unhappily, "I've waved about 12% of the Function Nodes and 10% should be enough to make it work". "So, when've you organised the Boskone raid?" asked his uncle. Brains just rolled his wheel chair back and forward, unhappily.
A week later they were within the orbit of Mercury. An emergency skin on the skeleton had made the thing nearly invisible, and Uran had flown it by remote control, as they accompanied it in the SS Champ. All the filters were on maximum, as they watched the stripped hulk be pushed into the Sun. Uran's other half was wearing her red-headed human body, and hugging Brains, then Jack, then Brains again, as she dabbed at her eyes.
"I never even got to launch her", she said.
